IT is really quite implausible, the principle of an 'Infinite Well'. A storage capacity that goes on for ever and that no matter how much is drawn from it, no matter how much is remove, there is always more. Always too much more to remove to empty the Well.
ONE such Well is the internet, I was browsing last night picking up random things to read, Rachel Carson - author of Silent Spring - and Alastair McIntosh were my two choice authors. I am in contemplation of learning to ride a tandem bicycle with my wife, four on a bike with our boys too, so that has been a little focus of the searches, how do you get into that as something to do? Still the Well goes deeper. Infinite links and connections and occasional advertisements flash up and show you new things and better ideas and other places to explore. Taken as an adventure, the internet has a huge scope for getting lost and finding all sorts of exciting places and things and ways to go.
I keep linking to new pages, new places, new faces.
IT is some kind of a labyrinth I suppose, with infinite junctions and infinite entrances; all permissive, all acceptable. Insane to be able to constantly and forever keep turning corners and walking on, with no end. Yet I keep connecting, keep finding new corners, I keep linking to new pages, new places, new faces.
DESPITE what 'writer's block' might have you - and me at three in the morning - believe, creativity is also and Infinite Well. There is always another story to write, another tale to tell, another painting to paint, another symphony to compose. The supply is endless. As a young creative - both in age and in time spent as a self-realised creative - I am blown away by the constance of the supply, by the continuing flashing in of new ideas, new concepts, new ways of spinning letters and words together to create new meanings and new ideas.
THE starlings in the eaves above me have the same infinite creativity. They are fluttering here and there, back and forth, back and forth building a nest of sticks. They do not seem to worry that there will not be enough sticks, or that they will not find the right thickness or length. They just keep coming and going, with a little squark of hello and goodbye to each other as they pass. Off into the Infinite Well of lawns and gardens and copse and meadows and parks around our house.
waiting for the next leak to spring from the dam
AND the real magic of creativity is that creativity not only outlasts our extractions and removals, it thrives from them. Pushing the mind further and further still, expanding, expanding, growing images, lives, worlds, universes. Parallel universes do exist, there is one where Harry Potter lives, another inhabited by Jane Eyre and still more inhabited by Sherlock Holmes and Gandalf and Rincewind and Scarlett O'Hara and Anne Shirley and... And that is only a few famous worlds from novels. Creativity spreads throughout the world in film and in painting and in knitting and in tapestry and in song and on and on. Impossibly long. The Infinite Well of human creativity, waiting for the next leak to spring from the dam of whatever Source may be storing it all up somewhere behind the great dam of imagination and creativity.
ALL that remains is to climb the dam and leap into the swirling waters of imagination below. Wallow in them, swim, dive deep, feel the currents push you this way and that and sing with the throbbing pulse of it pressing on your ears and chest and feel it in your heart. Grasp it, let it slosh from your fingers and then express it, as only you know how; freely, openly, beauty-fully.
FINALLY I suppose that Infinite Well could also be a wish of good to someone. An ultimate desire for gratitude and safety bestowed upon another. So, I thank you for visiting my corner of the Infinite Well. As you set out exploring the universal Infinite Well I wish you nothing but Infinite Well and pleasure discovering the depths of your own inner Infinite Well.
[Footnote: I tuned into BBC Radio 2 tonight while flashing together pasta pesto for dinner. It turns out their 'Golden Oldies' were to celebrate the creation 25 years ago of the World Wide Web, which birthed the umbiquitous double-U, double-U, double-U dot, and spawned The Internet. Ah, the subconscious connections of the universe - discuss!]